Otjesd (Leaving) and the Making of Otjesd, 2005

Video and series of 6 photographs

GermanEnglish

In Otjesd/Leaving von Wedemeyer investigates the immigration of Russians to Germany, which increased after the fall of the Berlin Wall. In a single fifteen minute shot, which recalls the camera work of the great Russian masters such as Andrei Tarkovsy or Aleksandr Sokurov, the film captures an imaginary scene of people waiting for visas in front of the German consulate in Moscow. The camera slowly follows a young woman trying to fight her way into the building. The different dialogues in Russian are not dubbed or subtitled, creating for the viewer an atmosphere of confusion and disorientation. This is further enhanced by the incessantly moving camera, and the fact that the scene was shot neither at a consulate nor in Moscow, but in a forest near Berlin.

In Otjesd/Leaving von Wedemeyer investigates the immigration of Russians to Germany, which increased after the fall of the Berlin Wall. In a single fifteen minute shot, which recalls the camera work of the great Russian masters such as Andrei Tarkovsy or Aleksandr Sokurov, the film captures an imaginary scene of people waiting for visas in front of the German consulate in Moscow. The camera slowly follows a young woman trying to fight her way into the building. The different dialogues in Russian are not dubbed or subtitled, creating for the viewer an atmosphere of confusion and disorientation. This is further enhanced by the incessantly moving camera, and the fact that the scene was shot neither at a consulate nor in Moscow, but in a forest near Berlin.

Clemens von Wedemeyer, born in 1974 in Göttingen, Germany, currently lives and works in Berlin and holds a professorship for media art at the Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig. The artist and filmmaker studied photography and media at the Fachhochschule Bielefeld and the Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig and graduated as Meisterschüler of Astrid Klein in 2005. Clemens von Wedemeyer participated in group shows such as the 1st Moscow Biennale (2005), the 4th Berlin Biennale (2006), Skulptur Projekte Münster in 2007, the 16th Biennale of Sydney (2008) and dOCUMENTA (13) (2012). He had solo shows among others at MoMA PS1, New York, ARGOS Centre for Art and Media, Brussels, the Barbican Art Centre, London, Frankfurter Kunstverein, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, and Hamburger Kunsthalle. “ESIOD 2015” premiered at the 66. Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin (Berlinale) in 2016.